[2] The growing power of these and other unions in the federal government led President Theodore Roosevelt to issue Executive order 163 on January 31, 1902, banning federal workers from "individually or through associations, [soliciting] an increase of pay, or to influence or to attempt to influence in their own interest any legislation whatever, either before Congress or its Committees, or in any way save through the heads of the Departments in or under which they serve, on penalty of dismissal from the government service.

On November 26, 1908, Roosevelt dramatically widened the extent of the Executive Order to include military personnel, expanded the kind of information which could not be communicated, and banned other actions by employees.

On April 8, 1912, Taft amended the order to permit federal workers to communicate with Congress, but required them to do so through their supervisors and department heads.

Some local chapters—especially those in large federal agencies in Washington, D.C., where the number of workers enabled craft-based bargaining units to remain viable—retained their craft structure.

NFFE became a strong advocate for women's rights, and elected a woman, Florence Etheridge, as the chair of its first national council.

In 1923, NFFE won passage of the Classification Act, which established uniform, nationwide compensation levels and tied them to the duties and responsibilities of job positions.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, establishing the right of federal workers to engage in collective bargaining.

In August 1987, the Reagan administration issued civil service rules requiring all federal workers to sign a new secrecy pledge, Standard Form 189.

Administration officials said the new form was designed merely to reinforce the need to maintain the security of those documents classified as top secret.

On April 18, 1989, the Supreme Court held in American Foreign Service Association v. Garfinkel, 490 U.S. 153, that the issuance of Standard Form 312 may have resolved the conflict.

In March 1990, the District Court dismissed the remaining issues in its ruling in American Foreign Service Association v. Garfinkel, 732 F. Supp.

The American Federation of Government Employees was particularly aggressive in courting NFFE members and convincing them to switch their union affiliation.

As NFFE's voting strength among the workers weakened, the national union's leaders sought to end the raid by affiliating with the AFL–CIO.

Although IAM devoted significant resources to the organizing battle, the Machinists' expertise was in the construction and aerospace fields, not health care.

[1] More recently, NFFE waged a lengthy legal battle against the U.S. Department of Defense's new National Security Personnel System.

NFFE won several significant rulings in the legal fight but did not prevent the system's implementation, and the union began to pursue legislative remedies in Congress instead.